Sexuality! and Poor Writing! - JKR's Mistake

[Mike]

> Magpie:
> Though it would have if it turned out McGonagall was his ex-wife. 
> The point being just that it would be illuminating a relationship 
> in canon by telling us wait, there's a romance here--or was. 

Mike:
Well, Pippin's hypothetical was that DD was a widower, so that would 
make McGonnagall being one of his exes problematic, wouldn't it? But 
I understand your premise and ask, wouldn't the DD-McG dynamic been 
written differently if they were exes? So, yes, that would most 
likely have affected both the writing and reading of the story. Maybe 
that would have been thought the reason DD didn't seem to trust 
McGonnagall with some of his varied secrets. Which would have diluted 
the famous DD penchant for secrecy in an unhelpful way, imo.


> Magpie:
> Which is basically the only place where DD's gayness comes in--
> with Grindelwald. Other than that it's just as important as any 
> character's sexuality, which is part of them but might not be 
> something that the author finds a natural way to put in. 
<snip>
> As it stands in story terms the only part that's really 
> relevent that we know of is that DD/GG is slightly different than 
> it seemed to Harry, just as any DD/McG scenes would be in 
> retrospect a bit different than Harry imagined if McG was his ex.

Mike:
I'm not sure what more to say that I haven't said before on previous 
posts and above. So I'll move on to different angle.

On the one hand, I wish that JKR had added that one sentence that 
would have definitely signalled that DD was gay. It not only would 
have been more courageous way of handling this, it would have been 
the illuminating canon that you have alluded to above. If JKR had 
always thought of DD as gay, I've lost respect for her for not making 
it more obvious to the reader.

On the other hand, including DD's gayness really adds nothing to the 
story for me. I guess in JKR's mind, she wrote a gay!DD and yet I saw 
nothing in canon that would make me believe that. And since the story 
doesn't change in any significant manner by making DD gay, what would 
be the point of including it? Not the social ramifications, mind you, 
but for the sake of the story. I can understand some people's desire 
for JKR to include a gay character to make a statement. But I never 
read these books to get a morality message from JKR, I feel I've got 
a handle on that all by myself, thank you very much. 

Besides, I never thought these books were written with the intent to 
instruct in some moralistic vein. I was already disappointed that she 
included Christain themes, though she did warn us that she would be 
doing so. Still, I thought "King's Cross" was a hackneyed portrayal 
that I'd seen done much better by others. <(Aside: I remember putting 
the book down after reading the first few sentences of that chapter 
and saying to myself, "No, tell me she's not going there.")> That's 
neither here nor there. I do remember that JKR had allowed that she 
was not writing these books as her way of conveying her moralistic 
view through wizarding allegories and/or metaphors. That hasn't 
stopped her public from drawing those parallels in their analysis, 
but that's nothing that she could control.

JKR's mistake, I believe, was not in answering the question. That, 
people could include or not as part of canon as is their wont. It 
was, as Carol has pointed out, her declamation that Dumbledore is her 
character and that he is what she says he is. That was insulting to 
her readership, IMO, and denies the primary benefit one gets from 
reading -- of being able to create a world of the mind to illustrate 
the written word.

OK, enough pontificating from me.

Mike